Brave Companions: Portraits in History

The best-selling author of Truman and John Adams, David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition. Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war”....

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

This monumental book tells the enthralling story of one of the greatest accomplishments in our nation's history, the building of what was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Brooklyn Bridge rose out of the expansive era following the Civil War, when Americans believed all things were possible.

Truman

Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation. The life and times of the 33rd president of the United States, Truman provides a deeply moving look at an extraordinary, singular American.

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914

The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. McCullough expertly weaves the many strands of this momentous event into a captivating tale.

The Course of Human Events

On May 15, 2003, David McCullough presented "The Course of Human Events" as The 2003 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities in Washington, DC. The Jefferson Lecture is a tribute to McCullough's lifetime investigation of history.

John Adams

McCullough's John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. This is history on a grand scale, an audiobook about politics, war, and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship, and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, it is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

1776

Why we think it’s a great listen: If you ever thought history was boring, David McCullough’s performance of his fascinating book will change your mind. In this stirring audiobook, McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success.

The Johnstown Flood

At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon.

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.

The Wright Brothers

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story behind the story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright.

On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright's Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. The Age of Flight had begun. How did they do it? And why?

Theodore Rex

The most eagerly awaited presidential biography in years, Theodore Rex tells the story of President Theodore Roosevelt in real time, reflecting the world as "TR" saw it. Full of cinematic detail, Theodore Rex moves with the exhilarating pace of a novel, yet it rides on a granite base of scholarship.

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. With the help of the "muckraking" press, Roosevelt had wielded the Bully Pulpit to challenge and triumph over abusive monopolies, political bosses, and corrupting money brokers. Roosevelt led a revolution that he bequeathed to Taft only to see it compromised as Taft surrendered to money men and big business. The rupture led Roosevelt to run against Taft for president, an ultimately futile race that gave power away to the Democrats.

Born Again: What Really Happened to the White House Hatchet Man

In the 1970s, against the backdrop of the explosive Watergate scandal, Charles Colson revealed the story of his own search for meaning during the tumultuous investigations that led to the collapse of the Nixon administration. A convicted former special counsel to the president, Colson paradoxically found new life - not with success and power, but while in national disgrace and serving a prison sentence.

Washington: A Life

In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. This crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001, marked the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president.

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades", now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important figure in American history, who never attained the presidency, but who had a far more lasting impact than many who did.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry. Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.

Undaunted Courage

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River, across the forbidding Rockies, and - by way of the Snake and the Columbia rivers - down to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, endured incredible hardships and witnessed astounding sights. With great perseverance, they worked their way into an unexplored West. When they returned two years later, they had long since been given up for dead.

Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan

Autumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes listeners to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill

At age 24 Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal, he had to do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British army officer in colonial wars in India and Sudan and as a journalist covering a Cuban uprising against the Spanish, glory and fame had eluded him.

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

Publisher's Summary

From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of John Adams

Winner of the 1982 National Book Award for Biography, Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it is the story of a remarkable little boy - seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma - and his struggle to manhood.

His father - the first Theodore Roosevelt, "Greatheart" - is a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. His mother - Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt - is a Southerner and celebrated beauty.

Mornings on Horseback spans 17 years, from 1869, when little "Teedie" is 10, to 1886, when he returns from the West a "real life cowboy" to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man, whole in body and spirit.

This is a tale about family love and family loyalty... about courtship, childbirth and death, fathers and sons... about gutter politics and the tumultuous Republican Convention of 1884... about grizzly bears, grief and courage, and "blessed" mornings on horseback at Oyster Bay or beneath the limitless skies of the Badlands.

This is my second David McCullough book and they just get better and better. Here we have a story that will surprise you: not the biography of the TR that we know from history, but the shaping of him into that man. His father and mother were truly exceptional people, she a wonderful story teller coming from an eccentric southern family and he a patriot and charity-driven socialite. This book tells the story, as McCullough says in the afterward, of what formed the frail, asthmatic boy into the larger than life President. The books ends when he is finally the man we know.

And the journey there is amazing. He struggled throughout his childhood with sickness, his family lived a lifestyle that has long since vanished, he deals with amazing victories at an unprecedented early age and he survives the most devastating of losses. His character changes and grows and we watch with amazing precision as a new man emerges. This book is wonderful history, fantastic detail, an intimate character study, and ripping good fun. Enjoy it!

A focus on Roosevelt’s more interesting exploits. Well over an hour of this 19 hour tome is dedicated to every nuance of asthma. We get a detailed account of what asthma suffers experience along with a collection of historical & contemporary opinions on its causes. I get it was an important aspect of his character development but please... The book also suffered from horrible narration. Highly recommend you double the speed as it will make the narration cadence appear normal. If nothing else it cuts the pain in half. When they get to asthma turn it up to 3x.

Has Mornings on Horseback turned you off from other books in this genre?

No I really enjoy historical biographies.

Would you be willing to try another one of Nelson Runger’s performances?

Not if I can help it. Unfortunately he seems to narrate many of the books I gravitate to.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

It was good to get an inside look at one of America's legendary families. Just wished the author spent more time on the entree and less time on the appetizer

Any additional comments?

I was deeply disapointed in this book. I have enjoyed many of McCulloughs other works; John Adams, 1776 but can't recommend this one. He has managed to make one of our more influential and dynamic presidents a complete bore. Need to think long and hard about that Runger narrated 54 hour Truman book on my wish list...

"Morning on Horseback" is my last book from David McCullough because I am finally caught up with his discography. It is painful for me to write this review of Roosevelt because I have enjoy McCullough's work thus so far. Other reviewers blames the poor reading from Nelson Runger, but he has narrated so many of David's books that I have become custom to his style of narrating. I didn't find Nelson's voice to be slow or irritating. His performance of telling Roosevelt's life was spot on with the pace of the book.

After reading all of McCullough's works from Harry Truman to the Americans in Paris, I have the up most respect for him, but this story about Roosevelt is not really compelling to get into. It seems like his life was pretty routine at the time and didn't really have any hardship while he was growing up, other than his Asthma.

Since Roosevelt had a privileged life, it felt like the author was grasping any kind of information that he could find. I'm surprised that Mr. McCullough didn't explain the paint in Roosevelt's room. It was that boring to me that I almost gave up.

Needless to say, I am sad that I don't have anything else to listen to from this great historian. I hope that they will record more of his books on audio, but if you happened to be a fan of this author, either read Morning on Horseback on the back burner or read it first because the rest of his titles are fantastic.

If I have known about his material in school, I would had become a history major instead.

I was expecting a better story considering this was on best-selling book lists. While the story had some interesting parts, I may have enjoyed the book better if it had been abridged - the parts where the book delves deep into what asthma is and the psychology behind it was BORING - made worse by the very flat performance of the narrator. There were also other parts of the book, like Harvard history - when the school color officially became crimson rather than magenta - that made seemed unneccassary. At first, I had a hard time getting into the book because the performance was so monotone and you could actually hear when the narrator was taking deep breaths from his nose. It was a great book to fall asleep to. Also, the book changed my opinion about Theodore Roosvelt - I don't think I like him much after listening to this book.

I love David McCullough, but the narrator here read the book with a very sarcastic attitude toward the charactors which interfered with the story. McCullough also disapointed by claiming that all asthma is pscho-psomatic, and not acknowledge current medical knowledge that recognizes asthma is an auto-immune disease. It puts all the research for the book in question to have an entire chapter on Roosevelt's life long battle with this disease treated as a psychological disorder, rather than the serious physical challenge it presented for him. Another disappointment was the way this very long narrative ends - almost mid-sentence, and certainly mid-thought. As if McCullough ran out of notes, and couldn't be bothered to bring the book to a conclusion.

David McCollough captures, in detail, how the young Teddy grew through exceptionally difficult circumstances into a lively, engaging and always entertaining political figure. Much of the author's detail gives the reader insights into Teddy's actions and the tough demeanor he displayed in his later years. Exceptional read - highly recommended!

I did learn a great deal about TR, but did not realize that the book did not discuss his presidency. This was a major disappointment, which I should have investigated in advance.I also found the discussion of TR's asthma attacks and the lengthy dwelling of the author on his psychological theories concerning these overdone.While I do not regret listening to this title, it does not compare to the same author's biography of Truman.

McCullough's deep dive into the makings of our 26th president is an extraordinary work that reveals the DNA of this legendary figure. The author captures the essence of TR, he being the result of breeding the finest of bloodlines from the North and the South, during a time in which these regions hated each other, yielding an offspring with the best traits America had to offer. On the cattle ranch he so loved, he would have boldly announced a dynamic bull with such a mixing of pedigrees as an example of heterosis, endowed with a special hybrid vigor. While these the heterotic traits were not manifest in his physical being as a boy, the intellectual and cultural aspects in which he was bathed by such a regionally diverse pairing of parents allowed him to grow into a model of an American citizen and eventually molded him into one of the greatest leaders our nation has ever known. Such a revealing look at the basic morals and principles engrained into this great man from an earlier generation, should offer tremendous insights for parents of this generation. Love of country and of one's fellow man, no matter his social status is an attribute we should all seek. Mornings on Horseback is a wonderful gift from David McCullough and I am grateful he has made such a gesture. This book should be on everyone's 'must read' list!

What did you like best about Mornings on Horseback? What did you like least?

The author has written a fine book, but it is not a general biography of TR, just a discussion of how he came to be who he was, his family, his background. That's fine - if you already have read a bio of TR, but if you haven't, you really need to read one first. So there's nothing - save brief mention at the end - about the Rough Riders, nothing about his Presidency, nothing about his later life, really, i.e. what makes him a great man.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

To be fair to the author, he does say in his introduction that this is not a general biography - but for some reason Audible put this at the end, not the beginning! The cover does, on reflection, probably explain this, but it is normal for most biographies to at least cover the main events of their subject's life. Essentially I chose it because of the author's reputation.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

I didn't like Nelson Runger's narration. He is slow, and I don't like the voices he puts on for the subjects of the book. Probably just personal taste.

Was Mornings on Horseback worth the listening time?

Yes, but only just. It was not the general explanation of TR's genius that I was looking for, but as I explain above, it is perhaps not entirely fair to criticise the book or the author for that - just take care that this book is what you really want.

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